Month: February 2012

I Pledge Allegiance?

ORJ8 Comments

For the last two weeks, my daughter has been making the same observation wherever we go:  “Look, Mommy; the American flag!…God Bless America!”  We don’t talk much about the flag in our house (or about blessing America), but today I found out why she had become such a vexillologist.*  When I dropped her off at pre-school this morning, her regular Tuesday music session was already in progress.  I helped K quickly wash her hands so that she could run off and join her classmates.  As I walked out of the room, I heard her music teacher say, “Okay, let’s stay standing, because I brought my flags with me today!”  I left the classroom, but stood outside the door to watch as the music teacher picked two children to hold two flags, and then led the group in a song that I couldn’t hear, but assume was patriotic.  Watching all of this, I was caught off guard.

My husband was raised in the black nationalist tradition, and I am first-generation—both of my parents are immigrants to the United States.  As a result, neither my husband nor I are strangers to alienation within the borders of one’s own country.  As far back as high school I stopped automatically pledging allegiance to the flag every morning.  Part of it was pure teenage rebellion; I was just daring somebody—anybody—to try and force me to recite the creed.  But part of it was also a political awakening.  It had started becoming obvious to me that, some 30 years after the civil rights movement, Blacks were still not necessarily embraced as rightful citizens of the United States.  The American flag, in all its starred and striped glory, still did not represent me, and so I did not have to pledge allegiance to it.  One need only look at the enduring birthism movement in the country, a full 3 years into Obama’s presidency, to find continuing evidence of the country’s ambivalence towards its minorities.

As an adult, I remain conflicted about my country of origin.  Our national conversation—or maybe lack thereof—regarding marginalization and subordination is discouraging.  A social and legal embrace of “colorblindness” have made impotent the words of the Fourteenth Amendment; instead of genuine respect and dignity for all citizens, we have mere formal equality, as if treating similarly people who are not similarly situated could ever result in justice.  The current discourse about reproductive rights has left me feeling attacked and hurt; the rhetoric makes clears that my capacity as a woman for thoughtful and rational decision-making is still questioned.  Buoyed three years ago by the election of our first Black president, I am now deflated by the racism and classism that still abounds; that is, indeed, on the rise, as indicated by presidential candidates who “don’t want to give their money to Blacks,” or who “are not concerned about the very poor.”  Although I never feel more American than when I am abroad, when in my own country, patriotic stirrings wax and wane.  I dismiss The Star Spangled Banner as war propaganda, but eagerly harmonize to “This Land is Your Land;” I roll my eyes at “America, The Beautiful,” yet, “If I Had a Hammer” never fails to bring me to tears.  I’m ultimately more patriotic to the idea of what American could be, but not what it presently is.

Which brings me back to my daughter.  What, exactly, do I want to teach her about allegiance to the flag?  She is, after all, a citizen of this country, and must learn that, if only to ensure that she exercises her rights.  Like me, however, I’d also like her to see the potential of the United States—which means teaching her to love this country, so that one day she might be motivated to improve this country.  And yet, as I walked away from her classroom today, I felt uneasy about having watched the classroom teacher help K place her tiny hand over her beating heart.  My reaction to such early political indoctrination regarding a country that has still not done right by all its citizens is mixed; much like my feelings about my country, I suppose.

*vexillology: the scholarly study of flags

This Child’s Mama

Dr. Mama Esq.1 Comment

As a vocalist, and a obsessive music devourer, I cannot help but be saddened by the death of Whitney Houston. Even though I generally don’t cry and carry one about the death of someone I didn’t know personally, the death of a major icon is simply jarring. Especially an icon that means so much to something you love.

It’s been particularly unsettling to see all the images and videos of Whitney alive. Although who she’d become in more recent years is not the way many of us want to remember her, all the images speak to a simple fact: she was once here and now she isn’t. And so despite the various images of Whitney Houston that have flooded through the media and internets since her passing on Saturday, there is another image that I simply can’t get out of my mind.

That’s Bobbi Kristina, Whitney’s 18 year old daughter, being rushed to the hospital in the day or so after her mother’s death.

Let me say that I do not know the pain of losing a parent, especially losing a mother, although I know some of our writers and readers do. Two good friends both recently lost their mothers and their grief is palpable. But it is an unimaginable event to me.

But I do know that even the notion scares me at 31, so the terror of that feeling at 18…I do know what it feels like to be hopeless, to be shrouded in doubt and anxiety. I can only imagine what it means to lose your rock in the world, the person who makes you make sense.

We’ve watched, from the periphery, Bobbi Kristina grow up. We’ve seen the dysfunction of her parents’ relationship. We’ve seen both of her parents seemingly self-destruct in front of our eyes. But we don’t know her. We don’t know her pain.

But what we should know if that more than a pop idol, more than a sometimes media disaster, Whitney Houston was this child’s mama.

I hope the media can be sensitive to this fact as the story continues to unfold.

 

 

Hair Therapy

ORJ2 Comments

When she was a young girl, Little M dreaded having her hair groomed.  Sure, disentangling and combing her kinky hair would require some uncomfortable pulling and tugging, but she feared something much worse than the rough feeling of her grandmother’s hands in her hair: the even rougher tone of her grandmother’s words in her ear.  Ordered to sit still on the floor while her grandmother unbraided, combed, and re-braided her hair, Little M endured a stream of insults and negative assessments.  Her grandmother stretched the hair-combing sessions out as long as possible, so that she could maximize the time spent telling her granddaughter about all the things that were wrong with her; all the inappropriate gestures and language she had used; all the problematic requests she had made.  With each charge of bad behavior, Little M’s grandmother painfully pinched her cheeks, or wrung her ears.  Grandmother’s hands left behind smears of hair oil on Little M’s face, like a scarlet letter broadcasting to the world just how inadequate she was.  As she walked away, finally dismissed from the session, she felt shame and inadequacy; she believed that she was worthless.

Half a century later, my mother combs my daughter’s hair everyday.  Together, they have a ritual.  Little K runs to retrieve her booster seat, places it on the table, and asks to be seated in it.  Ninnine unbraids my daughter’s hair, as my daughter begs her to comb it into her favorite style—an afro.  My mother tells her, “non, mon amour, Mommy does afros; Ninnine does cornrows.”  My mother starts the French DVRs that they watch during the sessions, and together they fall into the rhythm of the language lessons.  “Strawberries!,” my mother will say; “fraises!,” my daughter will respond.  “Bread!…du pain!”  “Cake!…gateau!”  “Oh, my little Kisou,” my mother ultimately says; “I love you all the time!”

When I come home from work, my daughter runs to the door to tell me about her day, and to show me her new hairstyle.  “You look beautiful, K,” I tell her, and she responds, as she does everyday, with “Ninnine combed my hair!”  I feel grateful that my mother manages my daughter’s kinks and coils in this way, and I admire the intricate rows and patterns of braids my mother has created with my toddler’s hair, like a crown.  Deeper than beauty or convenience, however, the hairstyle and accompanying ritual are symbols of the bond my mother and daughter are creating with each other.  I like to imagine that each cornrow represents a long line, stretching from my mother, the dispirited little girl, made captive to words that hurt and tore her down, to my daughter today, the spirited little girl who is repeatedly assured of her worth.  Along that line lays a path of healing.  My mother, no longer trapped between her grandmother’s legs on the floor, has released the pain and indignity of those hair sessions so long ago, knowing that her caregivers didn’t really know any better.  Our mothers and grandmothers don’t always realize that their good faith–but old-school–attempts to discipline us can inflict wounds that we are later compelled to re-inflict on the vulnerable in our own care, just as little children act out their abuse on their dolls in an attempt to make sense of it all.  Ninnine, however, has broken the cycle, using her power during hair sessions today to build Little K up, rather than break her down.  Each flick of my mother’s wrists weaves a new hairstyle and a new connection, conveying to Little K just how adequate, indeed just how inherently worthwhile and perfect, they both are.